In wireless communication systems radio frequency resources are allocated for communication between base stations and mobile stations. Due to a number of factors, such as governmental allocation of frequencies, interference and the like, there are a limited number of radio frequency resources to allocate for wireless communications. Thus, allocation of radio frequency resources requires careful consideration of a large number of factors, and any particular allocation technique will have drawbacks with regard to other allocation techniques.
FIG. 1 illustrates a WiMAX wireless communication system implementing one resource allocation technique. This system includes a base station 105 and two mobile stations 110 and 115. In the exemplary WiMAX system, resources (e.g., sub-channels, time slots and modulation and coding schemes (MCSs)) are allocated on the basis of signal quality measurements (e.g., carrier-to-interference noise ratio (CINR)), where more resources are allocated to mobile stations that have better signal quality conditions than mobile stations with worse conditions. This typically results in mobile stations that are located closer to base station 105 being allocated more resources than mobile stations located further away from the base station. In this technique the base station includes a scheduler to allocate the resources, and this allocation technique is referred to as proportional fair scheduling.